Founded on June 27, 1536, by Pedro de Alvarado with the name Villa de San Pedro de Puerto Caballos, close to the town of Choloma. There were around 18 towns populated by indigenous people in the valley at this time. The indigenous people were forced to labor for the Spanish Conquistadors under a system of peonage known as repartimiento. Early descriptions of the landscape indicate abundant swampland and dense tropical forests, with little land good for agriculture or cattle raising. The city's name became San Pedro Sula in the 18th century, after several changes. The "Sula" part of its name comes from the Minas de Sula, gold mines located to the west of the village of Naco.
For the first few years of its history, San Pedro was the colonial mint, where gold, found to the west in the Naco, Sula, and Quimistan valleys, had to be brought to smelt, and where the Spanish Crown collected a fifth of the value of the gold. The mint was moved to Gracias a Dios, and ultimately Comayagua in the 1550s.
French, English, and Dutch pirates raided and sacked the city, prompting the Spaniards to move the city to its current location along the Chamelecon River. San Pedro languished to a neglected backwater, with few Spanish settlers. New settlers were not attracted to the city, preferring the higher, drier valleys inland with more farmland and gold mines. At the same time, lax Spanish control spurred illicit trade in alcohol from the Caribbean islands, such as Cuba.
The city grew slowly from about 800 residents in 1590, to almost 10,000 by the 1890s, but most of this population growth took place in the 19th century. In the mid 1920s, it grew from 10,000 to 100,000 people, following a boom in banana plantations in the region. Today, the city's metropolitan area has almost 1 million habitants and continues to expand. The building of a rail line between San Pedro and the coast, connecting the banana plantations to the ports of Tela and Puerto Cortes, as well as heavy investment from the local Palestinian businessmen, spurred development of San Pedro as an industrial city. San Pedro Sula was officially recognized as a city by the Congress of Honduras on October 8, 1902.
Places of interest
Museums
San Pedro Sula has three main museums.
Museo de Arqueología e Historia
Museo de la Naturaleza
Planetario Infantil
The Museo de Antropología e Historia is licensed by the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History to house archaeological and historical collections.